It's almost the end of October on this now almost half year old thread.
Where's my monitor?
Where's my monitor?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple's Rumored 27-Inch Mini-LED Display Now Said to Launch in October
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I wouldn't hold your breath (but would be delighted if I was wrong).
Meanwhile, I've been enjoying the ASD daily since it came out. I just don't know what a mini-LED would do for me other than better blacks. The lack of HDR in the ASD is a spec. sheet miss, but it really is more HDR than many 'True' HDR displays out there.
It really isn't. I know that a company can get basic DisplayHDR400 or 600 certification but it isn't really HDR until you get into local dimming backlights (like the Pro Display XDR), preferably MiniLED (like the Macbook Pros or iPad Pro 12), or self emissive, like OLED (like iPhones) or MicroLED. Also, it's an IPS display. There's a reason why none of the best HDR displays on the market use IPS panels.
Was it unable or was it that apple didn’t submit it for that certification? The mini led MacBooks and iPads should qualify and they aren’t certified either.
It's unable. Generally, to get Dolby Vision HDR Certification for your facility, you need an HDR mastering monitor capable of 200,000:1 static contrast. The XDR's is much lower. Apple released a white paper giving details about the HDR and, tellingly, even there they omit the device's static contrast. The impressive-sounding 1,000,000:1 contrast figure Apple supplies is dynamic contrast.
Here's my guess at what the issue is:
Dynamic contrast is measured by determining the ratio between the brightest and darkest a display can be at a certain point at different times and, with local dimming, you can achieve extremely high dynamic contrast ratios—just go from having it on to having it off. But note this ratio is achieved by comparing maximum brightness at one time with minimum brightness at another time.
By contrast, static contrast requires measuring the difference between maximum and minimum brightness at adjoining points on the display at the same time, which corresponds more closely to what an audience actually sees when watching a movie. Only with high static contrast can you display a bright object on a dark background and not see a "glow" artifact around the bright object, and the problem with the XDR is that it does the latter. In order to avoid that, you'd need the local dimming zones to be so small that there's a sharp transition from the bright object to the dark background, and I'm guessing the problem is that, with only 576 local dimming zones, the XDR can't achieve this.
Of course, Apple, being smart, knew this when they released the display. Thus it was highly dishonest of them to present it as equalling or exceeding the Sony Trimaster HDR Mastering Monitor, when they knew it was incapable of being able to do the essential thing such a monitor is used for.
See:
Dolby Vision mastering monitors.
Is there a list of monitors approved for Dolby Vision mastering? The new PVM X2400 looks very promising. Any thoughts.
www.liftgammagain.com
Last edited:
I didn't say it was better than the best HDR displays. I said it was better than some displays that claim HDR.
Look, I've had this thing for months. I've spent quality time with ASD and while I concur that it's not a true HDR display, it takes an expert eye and some specific footage for its shortcomings to be visible. but in most situations it looks spectacular. This is based on actual experience of using it everyday.
So here's a funny thing. Around the time that the Pro Display XDR came around a lot of other MiniLED and OLED "mastering" panels came out too in the same price range. The thought is that during the pandemic, when a studio wasn't going to spend $30000 to send one of the dual LCD mastering screens home, they substituted these other types of panels. For the price of one Sony Display you can get 10 lower quality OLED screens to send home with staff. That may be why some of the HDR we've seen recently, like on Game of Thrones with it graded so dark you can't actually make out any detail, is due to them using these lower quality screens that can't get bright enough to grade highlights correctly.
I think we're arguing over semantics. I remember the first time I saw that panel in the 5k iMac years ago... it blew me away. It's one of the best SDR panels money can buy. Can we agree on that?
